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Derek Jeter and Larry Walker elected to HoF


DirtyDez

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2 minutes ago, redsoxsuck05 said:

Still better than Omar

The bulk stats are comparable, albeit Vizquel's WAR pretty significantly higher.

Baines: 38.7 WAR, 2866 hits, .289 career,  1299 runs, (obviously better power numbers)

Vizquel: 45.6 WAR, 2877 hits, .272 career, 1445 runs

...and you can at least make a defensive argument/positional value argument for Vizquel. He's Top 2 at his position all time.

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1 hour ago, mission27 said:

I'm just asking, when was the bar lower?  Like 1940?

Guys like Jim Katt, Louis Tiant, Carl Mays, Orel Hershiser, Tommy John, etc. arent in either.  It took Bert Blyleven and Jack Morris years.  Those arent guys from the 90s and 00s.

The bar has been too high consistently, but it's gotten worse recently with writers still looking too much at bulk stats instead of peak.

The math here is pretty simple, there are 331 players in the Hall of Fame. 72ish of them are starting pitchers, and that number is too low. If you think it should be straight 50/50, assuming we aren't kicking out position players, we're like 185-190 pitchers short. Even if you think it should be 40%, we'd still need to double the amount of pitchers.

And the trend is getting worse. The worst starting pitcher to make the Hall of Fame in the past 20 years was Jack Morris. After that, it's Tom Glavine. There's only 1 guy who's even questionable - though, let's be real, Jack Morris is far from the worst Hall of Famer. Meanwhile you have tons of guys who completely deserve it that are getting left off.

 

Johan Santana is kind of the posterchild for what I'm talking about. He's the best pitcher in baseball for a 3-4 year window, puts up nearly 50 WAR, gets hurt, and is done around 31. Is he a Hall of Famer? In my mind, absolutely. I could see someone who really values longevity wanting to keep him out, but it's an uphill battle. He got 2.4% of the votes and was one and done. That's absurd.

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2 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

Johan Santana is kind of the posterchild for what I'm talking about. He's the best pitcher in baseball for a 3-4 year window, puts up nearly 50 WAR, gets hurt, and is done around 31. Is he a Hall of Famer? In my mind, absolutely. I could see someone who really values longevity wanting to keep him out, but it's an uphill battle. He got 2.4% of the votes and was one and done. That's absurd.

100% THIS.

King Felix is also a HOF.

Cliff Lee being 1 and done is egregious...he at least should have been a "borderline" guy.

I'd also argue for Lincecum as borderline, as his 4 year window is extremely dominant.

I'm also a huge Orel Hershiser fan.

I was shocked that I just saw Luis Tiant isn't in.

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1 minute ago, MWil23 said:

100% THIS.

King Felix is also a HOF.

Cliff Lee being 1 and done is egregious...he at least should have been a "borderline" guy.

I'd also argue for Lincecum as borderline, as his 4 year window is extremely dominant.

I'm also a huge Orel Hershiser fan.

I was shocked that I just saw Luis Tiant isn't in.

So even if it's not 100 guys, let's say it's 50. It's a pretty easy exercise to go through baseball history and find guys who were absolutely dominant in their era for a few years, then fizzled. Go find 50 of them. Or find 100 and narrow it down a little bit.

 

There were 4 pitchers elected to the Hall of Fame during the 2000's. 4. That's just a complete failure by the BBWAA.

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1 minute ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

So even if it's not 100 guys, let's say it's 50. It's a pretty easy exercise to go through baseball history and find guys who were absolutely dominant in their era for a few years, then fizzled. Go find 50 of them. Or find 100 and narrow it down a little bit.

 

There were 4 pitchers elected to the Hall of Fame during the 2000's. 4. That's just a complete failure by the BBWAA.

Absolutely. If we are going to value post season dominance and the "story of baseball" (selectively used by BBWAA), then not having Schilling in there is criminal, not that I'm going to cry for him as a person or anything. I bet I can even name the four, I won't look it up:

Smoltz

Maddux

Glavine

Randy Johnson

(Rivera last year)

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2 minutes ago, MWil23 said:

Absolutely. If we are going to value post season dominance and the "story of baseball" (selectively used by BBWAA), then not having Schilling in there is criminal, not that I'm going to cry for him as a person or anything. I bet I can even name the four, I won't look it up:

Smoltz

Maddux

Glavine

Randy Johnson

(Rivera last year)

It's when they were inducted, so you were late. But if it makes you feel any better, I was wrong too. There were 3 pitchers inducted in the HoF during the 2000's, not 4.

Dennis Eckersley, Bruce Sutter, Rich Gossage. Bert Blyleven was inducted in 2011. Nolan Ryan in 1999.

And none of those guys got in because they were starters. Sutter and Gossage were almost exclusively relievers, and Eckersely had a very good, but not HoF starting career before turning into a monster as a reliever.

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32 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

It's when they were inducted, so you were late. But if it makes you feel any better, I was wrong too. There were 3 pitchers inducted in the HoF during the 2000's, not 4.

Dennis Eckersley, Bruce Sutter, Rich Gossage. Bert Blyleven was inducted in 2011. Nolan Ryan in 1999.

And none of those guys got in because they were starters. Sutter and Gossage were almost exclusively relievers, and Eckersely had a very good, but not HoF starting career before turning into a monster as a reliever.

The irony of how much the position of SP is valued based upon contracts to the discrepancy of the HOF and SP is something that has always intrigued me. Guys that are in my "generation" that haven't already been named that should have clear cases are:

Locks:

*Bumgarner (I know how you feel about him) as well as his postseason dominance

*Kershaw

*Scherzer

*Verlander

*CC

*Santana

*Felix

*Zack Greinke

...I'm sure I'm forgetting a guy or three

Has a case:

*Lincecum should at least have a CASE as a borderline guy IMO because of postseason

*Kluber is a fascinating guy because of a 4 year regular season dominance but yet doesn't have the postseason stuff 

*Chris Carpenter

*Brandon Webb

 

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4 minutes ago, MWil23 said:

Just defensively

Personally I think Belanger is second best. Actually if people were being honest he has a case for best over Ozzie. Smith was flashier so he immediately gets the recognition (I'm not saying he definitely was better but it is really close). I think there is gap between those two and the rest. 

Omar had the best hands of the three and probably ever, but he didn't have the range of those two.

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3 minutes ago, mse326 said:

Personally I think Belanger is second best. Actually if people were being honest he has a case for best over Ozzie. Smith was flashier so he immediately gets the recognition (I'm not saying he definitely was better but it is really close). I think there is gap between those two and the rest. 

Omar had the best hands of the three and probably ever, but he didn't have the range of those two.

All of this is fair, and there are a number of reasons that I think Vizquel deserves it (aside from my admitted obvious Indians bias). I personally think that he's a nice combination of "bulk stats" with obvious defensive prowess, and while most SABR metrics don't value his defensive value as much, I think that he at least warrants consideration.

He did hit over .270 for his career, which is always a pet peeve of mine when they say things like "He SUCKED at hitting". He didn't "suck", he just was average/slightly above average and clearly that wasn't his major forte. (Unfortunately his OBP was "meh" at best), but he did stockpile a lot of hits/runs, and has 11 Gold Gloves at a premium defensive position. 

I realize that an "emotional argument" isn't always the route to go, but at the same point, he was a guy that people paid money to see play when he was in his prime. If he's a SS in the 70's or 80's, he's a LOCK, but with the newly built SS era of the 90's and 2000's being ushered in, he's lost some of that value he would have had 5-10 years before that.

Here in the next two-three years, I think that he gets in with a few weaker classes coming up.

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2800+ hits and maybe the best glove at shortstop should be enough to get you into the HoF.

 

If there hadn't been such an outpouring of support for Walker and adjusting his numbers for Coors, then Walker probably doesn't get in. Seems pretty clear that the voters wanted Jeter to get in on a drama-free card. 

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9 hours ago, MWil23 said:

The irony of how much the position of SP is valued based upon contracts to the discrepancy of the HOF and SP is something that has always intrigued me. Guys that are in my "generation" that haven't already been named that should have clear cases are:

Locks:

*Bumgarner (I know how you feel about him) as well as his postseason dominance

*Kershaw

*Scherzer

*Verlander

*CC

*Santana

*Felix

*Zack Greinke

...I'm sure I'm forgetting a guy or three

Has a case:

*Lincecum should at least have a CASE as a borderline guy IMO because of postseason

*Kluber is a fascinating guy because of a 4 year regular season dominance but yet doesn't have the postseason stuff 

*Chris Carpenter

*Brandon Webb

 

I don’t know if Felix is a lock.  He’s not in the company of those others listed IMO.  
 

I hope Johan gets in he was basically a poor man’s Big Unit for 4-5 straight years.

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14 hours ago, MWil23 said:

100% THIS.

King Felix is also a HOF.

Cliff Lee being 1 and done is egregious...he at least should have been a "borderline" guy.

I'd also argue for Lincecum as borderline, as his 4 year window is extremely dominant.

I'm also a huge Orel Hershiser fan.

I was shocked that I just saw Luis Tiant isn't in.

Lincecum was great, but it wasn’t like he was Pedro dominant for that stretch. And even if he was, 4 years is still pushing it. Putting up a 72 ERA+ in the following 5 years makes it a real no go for me. I’m pro rewarding dominant stretches more than they do, but you can’t come in sub 30 WAR and be a HOFer imo. I’d put him in the hall of very good with guys like Waino, Haren, Weaver etc from that era. 

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10 hours ago, DirtyDez said:

I don’t know if Felix is a lock.  He’s not in the company of those others listed IMO.  

I should have said that Felix is a LOCK if I'm a voter, not that he's a lock period.

6 hours ago, TLO said:

Lincecum was great, but it wasn’t like he was Pedro dominant for that stretch. And even if he was, 4 years is still pushing it. Putting up a 72 ERA+ in the following 5 years makes it a real no go for me. I’m pro rewarding dominant stretches more than they do, but you can’t come in sub 30 WAR and be a HOFer imo. I’d put him in the hall of very good with guys like Waino, Haren, Weaver etc from that era. 

I have zero problem if Lincecum doesn't get in for all of those reasons. I'm simply saying that he should have an argument and shouldn't fall off of the ballot his first eligible year.

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